Stunts Biography - Bob Orrison

Episodes

tos

Spock and McCoy encounter a recently arrived crewmember, Crewman Norman, in the Enterprise corridors. McCoy notes that something bothers him about the man. Not only is he avoiding a medical exam, but he seems unemotional and detached from the rest of the crew. Spock, taking this as a jibe against himself, dismisses the complaint.

Norman goes to the auxiliary control center, overpowering the personnel there and taking control of the ship to lock it onto a new course. He rapidly goes to the emergency manual monitor and engineering, effortlessly defeating multiple crewmembers and resetting the ship's systems to lock out any change in the course he has laid in. Finally he proceeds to the bridge where he points out that his alterations have connected the matter-antimatter pods to the main navigational bank with a trigger relay, meaning any attempt to change course will destroy the ship. He also opens a panel in his stomach, revealing that he is an android.

The ship spends four days at Warp 7 heading for an unexplored Class K planet. Norman remains dormant throughout, standing motionless on the bridge. On arrival he demands that Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura and Chekov to beam down, threatening to destroy the engines if they refuse. They beam to a facility on the surface where None other than Harry Mudd reveals himself to have been behind their kidnapping. Mudd declares that he is now Emperor Mudd the First, and that the crew of the Enterprise will remain on his planet for the rest of their lives and there is nothing they can do about it. Mudd is accompanied by multiple robots, many of them identical to one another. He reveals that after his last encounter with the Enterprise he managed to escape from prison and engaged in further petty crime, including reselling patents. He was caught on Deneb V and sentenced to death, but again managed to steal a ship and escape. After wandering for a while he chanced on this planet and explored it, finding the facility there along with androids running it. The facility is equipped with fantastically advanced technology, capable of building massive numbers of androids to any specification, along with almost anything else one could want. Mudd, of course, stocked the place almost entirely with hundreds of female androids.

Although it seemed like a paradise at first, Mudd soon grew bored with the planet. He decided to leave, but the androids are so determined to serve him that they refuse to allow him to leave the planet. Mudd eventually told the androids about the Enterprise and asked them to capture the crew so they would have other Humans to serve, and so allow him to leave. He tries to convince Kirk that it won't be so bad, demonstrating some of the pleasant aspects of the place - including an android replica of his own wife who nags him specifically so that he can have the pleasure of yelling at her to shut up. The androids reveal that they were built by a species from the Andromeda galaxy which is now long gone.

Spock conjectures that the androids do not operate independently, but must function via some kind of control control system which guides them all. He tries to quiz them on the subject but they politely decline to answer his queries.

The androids begin trying to tempt the officers to remain. They tell Uhura that an android body will last for some half a million years. Since a human brain can be installed in one, this would give the person almost perpetual youth and beauty. Chekov finds himself enjoying the prospect of being surrounded by beautiful female androids, whilst Scotty is intrigued by their incredibly advanced engineering technology. Meanwhile the androids have forcibly removed the crew from the Enterprise, putting an android crew aboard to run the ship. There seems to be no way to stop them.

Kirk is increasingly annoyed by the situation, and when an Alice series android promises him that they will do anything to make him happy he states that he cannot be happy without his ship. Alice seems confused by this and asks Norman to "coordinate" a response, before leaving.

Mudd prepares to depart, but the androids refuse to let him leave despite their earlier deal. They reveal that they plan to export vast numbers of androids to all Human worlds, giving them the same life of complete luxury as exists on their planet - along with the same lack of freedom.

Spock notes that there are hundreds of each model of android on the planet, with the exception of Norman. There is only a single Norman as far as anybody knows. This, combined with the way the Alice asked Norman to coordinate a response when she was confused, makes Spock speculate that Norman may be the control system he spoke of earlier. Since illogic seemed to confuse the Alice, they wonder if they might not be able to overload Norman's ability to command the androids if enough strange and inexplicable behaviour is presented to the androids.

Reasoning that the androids will expect an escape attempt the crew stage a mock one, with Uhura turning traitor and telling the Androids about it so that they can foil the plan. Now hoping to have them at their ease, the crew begin their real campaign. They each challenge the androids with surreal behaviour, spreading confusion and illogic amongst them. Spock informs two of the Alice series that although he loves one of them, he hates the other - stating that he responds to them so differently because they are identical to one another. The illogic of the statement causes both androids to shut down.

The crew begin to target Norman directly, making him more and more confused until Kirk finally informs him that Harry Mudd is a liar, and everything he says is a lie. Harry then informs Norman that he is indeed lying - prompting Norman to realise that if that is a lie then Mudd must be telling the truth, but that if he is telling the truth then he must be lying. Finally overwhelmed, Norman shuts down and all of the other androids shut down with him.

With the crew back aboard the ship and control restored, Kirk decides what to do with Mudd. He will be left on the planet, stranded with the androids to look after him. Mudd is pleased that his imprisonment will at least be pleasant - until he finds that Kirk has had at least 500 copies of his nagging wife constructed, all of them designed so that they will ignore any order to shut up. Harry is thus left to indefinite imprisonment under the eternal nagging of the woman he most hates.

The Enterprise is in the vicinity of Sherman's Planet, a world claimed by both the Federation and the Klingon Empire, when they pick up a Code One Emergency from the nearby Deep Space Station K-7. The code is reserved only for the most dire disasters, so Kirk takes the ship in expecting the worst. On arrival, though, he finds the station apparently peaceful and untroubled. The commander of the station, a Mr. Lurry, asks Kirk to come over to the station to talk. On arrival, a furious Kirk finds the Federation Under-Secretary for Agriculture, Nilz Baris, in Lurry's office with his assistant Arne Darvin.

Baris admits that he ordered the emergency code because the station is currently holding a large stock of Quadrotriticale, a genetically engineered grain to be used on Sherman's Planet. He is worried that the Klingons will attempt to sabotage the grain, as this would seriously hamper the Federation's attempts to develop the planet - and under the terms of the Organian peace treaty, the planet will belong to whomever can best use it. Kirk is increasingly annoyed by the use of the emergency code for what he sees as such a trivial reason, but is forced to concede that Baris has the authority to issue it and to order Kirk to provide security. He reluctantly assigns two guards to the storage compartments and returns to the ship.

As the Enterprise orbits the station a Klingon cruiser arrives, prompting Kirk to go to battle stations. However the ship's commander beams over to the station and merely requests shore leave for his crew there; under the treaty Mr, Lurry must agree, but Kirk is deeply suspicious of the Klingon Captain, Koloth, and places limits on the number of crew who can come aboard at any given time. He also informs Koloth that he will assign a security guard to follow each and every Klingon on the station. Baris is extremely unhappy with this development, and wastes no time in venting his anger on an increasingly frustrated Kirk.

On K-7 Uhura and Chekov are enjoying some time in the station bar where an independent trader named Cyrano Jones is trying to sell his wares. These include a Tribble - a small creature which looks like a spherical ball of fur with no visible limbs or features. Tribbles emit a soft purring sound when stroked, and Uhura finds it adorable. Jones gives her one as a free sample and agrees a deal with the bar owner to supply some more.

Uhura's tribble quickly reproduces, giving birth to a whole litter of small Tribbles which she distributes them to the crew as gifts. The Tribbles in the bar also reproduce, making it impossible for Jones to sell more. He tries to sell them to the Klingons, but the Tribbles react to proximity to a Klingon with a distressed shrieking sound - and the Klingons seem to like Tribbles no better than the Tribbles like them.

The Klingons begin needling Enterprise personnel in the bar about what a terrible person Kirk is. Scotty, as the senior officer present, restrains Chekov from starting a fight - but when the Klingons begin to mock the Enterprise Scotty himself throws the first punch and a large bar brawl breaks out. Kirk logs the incident as a 'small disturbance' and confines Scotty to his quarters, which delights the Engineer as he will have time to read up on his technical journals.

Meanwhile the Tribbles are reproducing at a fantastic rate, every one of them giving birth to large litters of offspring every twelve hours. Soon thousands of them are overrunning the ship, and much to Kirk's annoyance there seems to be no way to stop them. When he tries to order a meal he finds that the Tribbles have gotten into all the ship's machinery, including the food system, and are consuming their supplies rapidly. Spock notes that the Quadrotriticale is being stored under similar conditions on K-7, which is also being overrun by the furry menace.

Kirk beams to K-7 and hurries to the storage compartments to check on the grain - only to find that the compartments are stuffed with almost two million Tribbles who have eaten all the grain in the process of reproducing. However, a scan reveals that many of the Tribbles are dead, and the rest are rapidly dying - victims of the grain, which had been poisoned.

A furious Baris blames Kirk for the fiasco, threatening to have his career in ruins. Koloth also demands an apology for the brawl, which he blames purely on Kirk's men. Koloth also demands the removal of the Tribbles which are crowding the room, as he suffers from the same dislike of them as other Klingons. As Kirk moves to take them away he passes Baris's aide, Arne Darvin - and the Tribbles shriek as soon as they get close to him. A quick examination by McCoy shows that Darvin is a Klingon, a spy working to sabotage the Sherman's Planet project - it was he who poisoned the grain with a virus which prevented the food being absorbed into the body.

With his own aide shown to be the cause of all the trouble Baris's threats against Kirk are rendered moot, and with the Klingons shown to be behind the sabotage Kirk is able to brush off Koloth's complaints and order him out of Federation space. A new shipment of grain is ordered for Sherman's Planet, which now should fall quite easily under Federation control. Kirk orders Cyrano Jones to clear up all the Tribbles on the station, a task Spock estimates will take him 17.9 years - his alternative being to be charged with disrupting a space station, a crime which carries a 20 year sentence.

A victorious Kirk returns to the Enterprise to find it wholly Tribble free. After some prevaricating, his officers admit to the method they used - they beamed the entire population of Tribbles into the engine room of the Klingon ship just before it went to warp. Where, as Scotty puts it, 'they'll be no Tribble at all'. Imagining the chaos that must be going on aboard the Klingon ship, the officers share a laugh as the episode ends.

The Enterprise is visiting an idyllic planet to do some research there, as McCoy describes the biology there as "a medical treasure trove". Kirk, who performed the initial survey of the world 13 years previously, described it as a near perfect planet which should be left undisturbed so that the peaceful but primitive inhabitants could progress in their own way.

Unfortunately it seems that the natives are not so peaceful any more - Kirk sees a group of Villagers setting up to ambush some Hill People using flintlock firearms. Worse, the Hill People are led by Tyree, whom Kirk met and befriended on his previous visit. Unable to use his phaser to intervene directly, Kirk lobs a rock at the Villagers, prompting one to fire accidentally and thus warning the Hill People. The officers quickly retreat as the Vilalgers give chase, but just before they can beam out Spock is shot in the back.

Aboard the Enterprise McCoy works to stabilise Spock, but can give no guarantee as to his prognosis. Kirk decides to head back down to investigate the planet further, and McCoy decides to join him - leaving Spock in the care of Dr. M'Benga, a specialist in Vulcan medicine who interned in a Vulcan hospital ward.

The ship's sensors detect a Klingon ship in orbit of the planet. Realising that it hasn't spotted them yet Kirk orders the ship to stay out of sight if possible, even if it means leaving orbit. He and McCoy beam down in native disguise and start to search the area for signs of Hill People. Unfortunately they are attacked by a fierce local beast called a Mugato, and Kirk is bitten. The Mugato bite is poisonous, and Kirk quickly falls unconscious. McCoy calls for help, but the Enterprise has left to avoid detection.

Tyree and some Hill People arrive at the scene and take Kirk and McCoy to their village. Tyree's wife is Nona, a local "Kahn-ut-tu woman" who is knowledgeable in the effects of various plants and animals on the planet. She goes to the cave where McCoy is looking after Kirk, and sees the Doctor using his phaser to heat some rocks to provide warmth. Intrigued, she demands that Tyree tell her everything about Kirk or she won't be able to cure him of the Mugato bite.

Nona treats Kirk with a "Mahko root", a thing that appears half plant, half animal. She places it on the bite and cuts her own hand open to place it on the root, chanting an incantation. The bite is completely cured within moments, leaving Kirk awake and aware. Tyree glumly states that according to legend, the mingling of the blood through the Mahko root means that their souls have met in the spirit world, and Kirk will be unable to refuse Nona any request from now on. It becomes clear that Nona uses her skills to dominate and manipulate as much as to heal and help.

Once Kirk is up and about, Tyree explains that the Villager's "fire sticks" appeared about a year ago; as far as he knows the Villagers make them themselves. Kirk asks Tyree to help him sneak into the Village at night to investigate. Nona is hopeful that Kirk's arrival will allow the Hill People to start fighting back against the Villagers, though Tyree wants no part in violence and merely hopes that the Villagers will eventually return to their peaceful ways.

Once in the Village, Kirk and McCoy find a chrome steel drill and carbon-free iron, along with cold rolled gun barrels - none of which could have been produced in the primitive forge that the Villagers possess. Soon a Klingon appears with the Village leader, Apella. Kirk overhears the Klingon discussing new weapon advancements that he will soon give to the Villagers, and how one day Apella will become governor of the whole planet - as a subject world of the Klingon Empire. Kirk and McCoy escape, taking a flintlock with them.

Back on the Enterprise Spock has been in a healing trace. He wakes, asking Nurse Chapel to strike him repeatedly in order to help him fully back to consciousness. She reluctantly does, much to the consternation of the passing Scotty. M'Benga explains that this is actually standard practice for Vulcans, and Spock has now recovered from his wound.

On the planet Kirk is demonstrating the operation of the Flintlock rifle to the Hill People, much to McCoy's consternation. Kirk justifies his apparent violation of the Prime Directive by stating that the Klingons have already upset the natural balance here, and the only thing to do is to restore the balance by giving equal weapons to the Hill People so that they can defend themselves. Although horrified, McCoy can offer no viable alternative.

Kirk encounters Nona away from the Hill People's camp, and she seduces him by rubbing leaves from some local plants on his arm, inducing a sort of hypnotic daze. Tyree sees this and raises the flintlock, moments from killing for the firt time. But he instead throws the weapon down in disgust and storms off angrily. Suddenly another Mugato attacks the pair, but the addled Kirk manages to vaporizes it with his phaser. Nona knocks Kirk out and steals the weapon, making off to find some Villagers. She finds a small group and proclaims that she now has the ultimate weapon, far more powerful than their "fire sticks". The Villagers don't believe her, and when Nona is unable to work out how to fire the weapon she is quickly captured. Kirk, McCoy and Tyree arrive on the scene - but the Villagers think that this was a trap, and one of them stabs Nona in the stomach. The Hill People and Villagers charge one another, and an appalled McCoy watches as the Hill People defeat them - with Tyree beating one man to death with a rock, lost in rage.

Afterwards, Tyree orders the few escaped Villagers hunted down and killed, and takes a flintlock over to Kirk to ask for "more of these, Kirk - many more!" The Enterprise arrives back in orbit and signals Kirk. He reluctantly asks Scotty how long it would take to manufacture a hundred flintlocks for the natives. Kirk is beamed up and the ship heads out of orbit, the deadly cargo presumably delivered.

Abraham Lincoln appears flaoting in space before the Enterprise (!). Understandably surprised, Kirk accepts the former president aboard the ship and gives him a guided tour. Lincoln invites Kirk and Spock to beam down to Exo III, a planet utterly hostile to Human life except for an unexplanable "oasis" spot on the surface. The invitation is accepted, and the officers beam down. They are met by an Excalbian, a silicon being who informs them that his people wish to investigate the Human concepts of good and evil to discover which is stronger. The good are to be represented by Kirk and Spock, Lincoln and Surak of Vulcan; their evil opponents are Ghengis Khan, Kahless the Unforgettable, Zora and Colonel Green. The aliens threaten to destroy the Enterprise in a matter of hours unless Kirk wins the battle.

The two groups skirmish on the surface, improvising weapons from whatever materials are to hand. Eventually Kirk and Spock manage to prevail, and the Excalbians release them and free the Enterprise to continue on its way.